Heilbroner describes the Civil War as an immense occasion for theft, fraud, and other criminal activity. Abraham Lincoln himself admitted that he violated the Constitution, as it was then interpreted, by taking most of the capital of the South through his 1862 Emancipation Proclamation. Is it appropriate to characterize all this as "crime"?a No, because the government of the United States had the Constitutional authority to prevent the greatest theft of all -- the theft, which was protected by State governments in the South, of all labor value, wages, capital, and of course personal freedom from the enslaved. b Yes, Lincoln was indeed a thief who stole all the economic power of the South and transported it to the North. c No, Lincoln was not a thief per se, but the criminal invasion of the South by the North was an unprecedented violation of the property rights of white slaveowners who were deprived of the value and of the income of their property. d Yes, a taking is a taking, whether done by an individual or by a government.