Great quote by historian Gary North about the illusion of choice in the American Deep State (in an article about the Civil War):
… Everybody wants to talk about the battles. On the whole, the battles were militarily irrelevant. The North had trains, the telegraph, the industries, the navy, and the population to sustain the war. It had the tax base. It had the banking system. The fall of Atlanta sealed the fate of the South, but it was not a battle. If it had taken place after November, Lincoln would have lost the election. If the South had held out until the following March, McClellan probably would have settled with the South. But Atlanta fell, and McClellan wasn’t elected.
The forgotten fact that you should begin with concerning the Civil War is this: the future of the North from 1860 to 1865 was dependent on the Illinois Central Railroad. Lincoln was a lawyer with that railroad. Stephen A. Douglas was a lawyer with that railroad. In senior management was George McClellan, who oversaw both of them. So, in the election of 1860, the President was going to be won by an Illinois Central lawyer. In the election of 1864, the election was going to be won by an employee of the Illinois Central Railroad.
Anybody who thinks this was random is the kind of person who believes that it was random in 2004 when a member of Yale’s Skull and Bones was going to be elected President. This is an organization that selects 15 people a year. Out of all the people in the United States, the only candidates who made it to the top were Skull and Bones members in 2004, neither of whom was allowed, or is allowed, by the secret oath of the organization to discuss the organization. Similarly, historians of the Civil War rarely bother to talk about the centrality of the Illinois Central Railroad.
The very same historians who love talking about the railroad robber barons…