It really wasn't Lincoln that didn't end the war, it was Andy Johnson (who never, ever was called 'honest').
Like all really awful ideas, the 'progressive income tax' started out with a purity of ideal. Clip the war profiteers that hired replacements to fight and made huge piles of money off the war at a far higher rate than the poor Irish immigrants that actually did the fighting and dying. Seems it didn't work out that way.
Do you know that the immigrants were paid $15 per month in the Union Army? In paper? Once in a while? That the King of England (a direct relative of the current bond holder) manipulated the 'potato famine' to send more Irish to America? You think any of that is related?
So we are still paying bonds for every war we've ever fought. It's a tradition now. You'd think FDR would have traded some of the Lend Lease equipment that kept England alive in WWII for Civil War Bonds. Didn't happen.
Sigh. Happy Tax Day Sult.
Well the war ended and both sides agreed to end the fighting in an "armistice" because when they sat down and figured out that neither side had the funds to pay back the bonds and figured they probably wouldn't collectively have it the time frame they agreed to "not end " it but cease fighting. That way England couldn't just "re-po" the country.
I did know about the Irish and that side of history, my father was 100% full Irish, so I grew up hearing all to often those stories. You can bet the bank the "potato famine" was orchestrated to supply more bodies at a cheap wage and higher price.
I don't know about the FDR and Lend Lease deal in much detail so I can't say if he even considered that on trading some of the bonds in exchange, chances are he didn't or it didn't extinguish much if he did.
I've already quit paying "income tax" so April 15 is just another day, just like July 15, or August 15.
Speaking of days, April 26 is coming up soon. You might recall I proclaimed that day as "National Hemi Day" in honor of the Mopar 426 Hemi engine. I am thinking of running a photo contest in honor of it, so if you have any photos of Hemi engines or old muscle cars with Hemi engines you might want to start digging those out.
Thanks for the support,
Sult