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.