OK, folks.
Whenever I see something on the History Channel, I wonder if their staff also makes up skits for Coast to Coast.
I didn't see what they said about this, but I've had some thoughts on the JS "prophecy". I think I've heard of some legends about earlier events in South Carolina prior to Smith's "prophecy" that naturally would have made the speculation seem reasonable by the time he wrote it. However, the stuff about it devolving into the apocalyptic worldwide war. . . the South calling on Britain, and Britain joining on the South's side, and other nations joining the North against the combined Southern and British. . . all that is nonsense. Curious nonsense, though.
According to Anton Chaikin, who wrote "Treason in America", and documented his allegations with credible evidence, both the Abolition and Secession movements were being funded from Britain with the intent to split up the States, and come in and pick up the pieces, and this effort was sustained over decades. Classic "Machiavelli", with apologies to Game.
New York bankers hand-picked Abraham Lincoln for the Republican ticket, knowing the country bumpkin with strong words against slavery would cause the South to secede, but it was their intent to convince him, Abe, to just let them go peaceably. Lincoln, however, was just country bumpkin enough to refuse to be manipulated by slick bankers, and he made it his battle cry "The Union must be preserved" because he knew if we split up we'd be too weak to stand, still, and that the ideals of human liberty would be the real losers.
Britain did try to help the South, but the Yanks set up an effective blockade. Russia did help the North as well.
However, the United States did in the aftermath of the Civil War fall into the manipulative hands of British bankers, and has been ever since, and that is why we became an Imperial power taking Cuba and the Philippines, and helped fight WWI and WWII, and became involved in the League of Nations and the United Nations, and why we castrated the States as politically "sovereign" entities joined in a Federal coalition, and made them subservient local administrators of Federal mandates.
Some fools think the Civil War was about ending slavery. It was about dividing a strong independent nation and subverting the principles of Liberty. Slavery will not be abolished until the po white folk, with po folk of every skin, reject Fascism imposed by a clique of corporatists, bankers, and assorted other elites, not the least of whom is the Queen of England.
Kinda hard to tell wage slaves anything, though.
