Ron Paul is the Worst because ... he blames Abraham Lincoln for the Civil War!!!

I'm beginning with a set of posts that examine Ron Paul's views on American history because it's important to understand just how wrong Ron Paul is about American history before diving into his policy positions.

So, here's Ron Paul on the Civil War.

Ron Paul makes two OUTRAGEOUS(LY WRONG) claims in this video:
1. He says that Abraham Lincoln engaged in the Civil War to get rid of the original intent of the Republic.

Lincoln did not start the Civil War. It's incredible that Paul could miss this elementary fact of US history. When Lincoln was elected (but before he was even inaugurated), South Carolina (and seven other states) succeeded. Then, the South Carolina military blockaded Fort Sumter. When Lincoln was inaugurated, he sent food and supplies to Fort Sumter. In response, South Carolina fired on the federal fort, thus starting the Civil War.

Let's do a simple couter-factual. If the South not succeeded, would there have been been a Civil War in 1861? No. Lincoln was trying to stop the spread of slavery to the territories but he wasn't even calling for the immediately abolition of slavery, let alone a Civil War.

2. Slavery in the United States would have gone away without a Civil War. Slavery went away in other countries without a war and the federal government could have just bought the slaves.
There are many, many problems with Paul's plan:
i. Lincoln actually wanted a government buy-out of the slaves and the Southerners rejected it. 
ii. As Yglesias point out in the link above, Southern opposition to ending slavery wasn't just about economics. It was also about maintaining a belief system about white supremacy. It was precisely that depth of feeling which caused the South to be willing to fight so hard for four years and lose 100,000s of men.
iii. Paul is arguing here that slavery would have just naturally gone away. What he is missing is that slavery was not a dying or even declining institution in 1860. In 1810, there were 1.1 million slaves. In 1860, there were 4.0 million slaves.  Furthermore, technology wasn't making slavery useless. Rather, the cotton gin made slavery more profitable and its invention in 1793 was one of the causes of the increase in slavery.