I looked at some of this and I can see his points. After all we know slavery in the Torah is nothing like slavery as practiced. For example if one has only one pillow, he must give it to his slave. The slave can not be made worse off than the master. That is different from galley slaves.
[However brilliant Thomas Sowell is I must mention that some of his points are less accurate as noted by Brian Caplan here.
Besides this it occurred to me that Lincoln had the authority to free the slaves דינא דמלכותא דינא."The law of the state is the law." Though he clearly did not have authority to make war on the South. Even though the law of the state is the law is applied differently by the Rishonim, still t least we have the Rambam who hold that if a king declares "Anyone who does not pay such and such a tax will be sold as a slave" that is valid. Thus with symmetry, he can declare slaves to be free.
If that was a good idea or not is debatable. But to me it seems that it was valid. Not only that but a sell under duress is valid. So the fact that the Southern States signed the 14th ammendment under duress does not make it invalid.. The only aspect that one can complain about in the Civil War is that the union of the states was voluntary. So making a war to keep it together, seems absurd.
And Lincoln's statement, "If slavery is not wrong then nothing is wrong", seems untrue. Maybe slavery is OK if slaves are treated right, while murder is wrong. Or making an unjust war might be wrong? People get all excited about lots of different things. sometimes justified and sometimes not.
Nowadays I can see the point of the South that in freeing the slaves, there would be perpetual war against the whites. This seems fulfilled nowadays with the continuous attacks against the Constitution and all Western values. It is like letting the German Barbarians into the Roman empire. While at firt things seemed okay, but eventually it was a time bomb just waiting to explode.
Lets say for a similar example that a women agrees to get married to some man. And then at some point she wants to leave? Can he then bludgeon her to death? [As actually happens.]
And so what about the colonies making the war of Independence of the American Revolution? if you want to go with "No taxation without representation". Well from what could that be true? We know the king of England can not make taxes without the consent of Parliament. But the Parliament can make taxes as well as it pleases. And the American colonies were being taxed y Parliament as is the right of Parliament to do so. [And even the king agreed.] Where in the Magna Charta or the Provisions of Oxford does it say every person that is taxed has to have representation? So the Colonies were in rebellion exactly as the South was. What makes one right and the other wrong? If the South was wrong, then so was the American Revolution.
