Hitchens make a classic error of moralists: he extrapolates his moral position onto others and grades them based upon that supposition. Not only is in error, it makes him a bad liberal as he should be a champion of moral relatavism which necessarily doesn't judge other people, but tries to understand them for what they are. But, then this flies in the face in his natural contradiction of political correctness. Such is the struggle he goes through. Luckily, this issue is resolves more readily using a rational thought process.

First, Southerners did not love the blacks. Neither did the Northerners. Southerners were content to keep blacks in bondage. Northerners were just as glad the Southerners did so. Lincoln had no issue with slavery, or to interfere with slavery (read Lincoln's first inauguaral address, the history of Hampton Peace Conference, for starters).

Lincoln's stated aim (again his first inaugural address, found on Yale's Avalon site) was to keep the tariff intact, which Southern states paid darn near most of, as they were the major importing states. Without the tariff, the federal governement was essentially financially paralyzed. Southern states resented that they were essentially supporting the federal government (this is a big issue, please do your own due diligence and read about this). They essentially advanced the same political theory that was espoused by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that it is the right of free people to break the bond of political allegiance with any government that no longer serves its interests. Lincoln essentially negated that natural right in his offensive against the Southern states.

If Lincoln was correct, then Jefferson must have been wrong. If Jefferson was right for the Union, then the Southern sessionists had to have been just as right. If slavery invalidates the Southern secession, then it necessarily means that it invalidates the colonial secession from the British Empire. Both were, at their core, tax protests.

Ron Paul makes an excellent point that the US was the only nation to get rid of slavery though a civil war. Other nations had the ability to end slavery though legislation. I guess Lincoln wasn't the diplomat that his eloquent words tend to suggest.

Before anyone buys the asinine lie that Lincoln had no issue with slavery, please read the "House Divided" speech, which shows that he most certainly did have an issue with slavery. This is the speech that made Lincoln famous and put in the White House even though he lost the Senate seat to Stephen Douglas.

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I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South.

This is NOT a speech about tarrifs, mind you.

Lincoln was a rascist himself! If you look at Lincoln in context, you will understand that he wanted to send all the blacks back to Africa or Central America. When he said that the nation cannot endure 1/2 slave and 1/2 free, what he really meant was deport all the slaves. This guy didn't give a hoot about the freedom of blacks. The reason why he wanted slavery "arrested" is that he didn't want any more black folk up in the North because he considered their very existence as threatening to the moral fabric of "white northern culture". Anyone who believed the same gutter thinking that Lincoln believed in his day would be branded a rascist. On the extinction phrase you quoted, everyone who was anyone at the time knew that slavery was eventually on the way out. Technological advances made it so. The South would have gotten rid of slavery like everyone else.

I would be interested in a citation showing that Lincoln want to deport blacks. Or is that only in "context"?

You should just shut up now, you really have no idea of what you are saying. You are so ignorant, in fact, that it is useless arguing with you about this subject anymore. Your little pea brain, and its attempts to understand and define Lincoln, would be humorous if it wasn't so insulting to the man's obvious genius and ability(not to mention his humility). Seriously now, just quit, you sound like a twenty year old who has just picked up the first history book you've come across, and regurgitates said book verbatim. Try to grasp the complexities of the man, and the times, a little more before you go spouting off like some professorial know-it all. What audacity on your part to simplify Lincoln like you have. In an earlier post, you seemed to almost want to deify Lee, of all people. How can Lincoln be racist, and Lee not. The latter owned slaves, for chrissakes, it doesn't matter his personal views(whether or not he found the practice of slavery repugnant, that is). Lee owned slaves, Lincoln didn't, and you try to say the latter is a racist, and the former is some sort of patriot. How quaint. So please, just stop.