"the Confederacy's central aim: to preserve (as Barr puts it) 'the right to own, exploit, and rape African Americans and their descendants forever.'"

Michael Burlingame wrote a very good dust jacket paragraph for "Loathing Lincoln" by John Barr.

“Paradoxically, America’s most revered president has also been its most reviled. As John McKee Barr shows in this meticulous, comprehensive survey of the anti-Lincoln tradition, detractors of the Rail-splitter have been a variegated crowd of strange bedfellows: white supremacists, Black Panthers, libertarians, neo-Confederates, agrarian romantics, Southern chauvinists, states’ rights advocates, and anti-imperialists, among others. Barr describes and analyzes their arguments, demonstrating that many of Lincoln’s critics have overlooked (or denied) the Confederacy’s central aim: to preserve (as Barr puts it) ‘the right to own, exploit, and rape African Americans and their descendants—forever.’”—Michael Burlingame, Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies, University of Illinois–Springfield - See more at: http://lsupress.org/books/detail/loathing-lincoln/#sthash.ROB4HjUS.dpuf